Mandel's office also is working to compile the salaries of
local government employees,
althought the information currently available is limited and does not now include any Central Ohio
communities.

With the exception of the state employee salaries, the project did not require much heavy
lifting by Mandel's office. The Buckeye Institute, a conservative-leaning Columbus think tank,
provided Mandel with all the other salary information, which a Mandel spokesman said was not
independently vetted.

"Every day, citizens throughout Ohio go to work and work their butts off. They have a right to
know how their tax dollars are being spent," said Mandel, who plans to seek the Republican
nomination for U.S. Senate to oppose incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown. "I am trying through this
transparency project to empower citizens to hold government officials accountable."

The office plans to eventually allow the information to be downloaded as a spreadsheet for
in-depth examination.

The Ohio Department of Administrative Services has posted the state payroll online for a couple
of years, but it consists of a
user-unfriendly PDF file and only lists bi-weekly salaries.

Mandel's office says it spent $58,000 on the redesign of the expanded website, $8,000 less than
his predecessor spent on a similar effort.

The Associated Press reported today that figures for Scott Guthrie and Joel Riter were among
about 70 treasury employees whose salary data initially was not listed before being added. Both
worked for Mandel’s 2010 campaign for treasurer, then for his state office, before returning to
Mandel’s political team. Mandel's office blamed a programming glitch for the missing
information.